


Take me down with you when you go

by Trojie



Series: Let her dance with me (just for the hell of it) [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crossdressing, Disguise, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Haircuts, Implied Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Multi, Police
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess gets picked up in a one-horse town for looking too much like her mugshot. She decides she needs to do something about that. The boys just want to make sure she's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take me down with you when you go

**Author's Note:**

> For my hc_bingo 2013 card, prompt 'arrest', and because there need to be so many more AUs where Jess lived. Title from 'Chelsea Dagger' by the Fratellis.

They've been on the road for a month since the fire. 

Jess is doing pretty good. They're chasing Dad, obviously, but he's still playing his stupid games, avoiding them and giving them orders, and he clearly doesn't know they've got a rookie with them or he wouldn't send them after a goddamn _wendigo_ (Sam is kind of mad about that), but she's coping. 

She's actually okay with a shotgun, turns out, and better than Dean and Sam with civilians, which makes her an asset and got Dean on her side straight away when she started saying she wanted to help out on hunts when Sam was trying to keep her safe on the sidelines. 

The sidelines didn't last long, anyway. Jess does not exactly take well to being benched. Sam already kind of knew that but he's learning it again in more dangerous circumstances. He gave up trying to keep her out of their work after about a week.

And then she gets freaking arrested when she's taking a walk to the nearest grocery store, and the first thing Sam and Dean know about it is when she gets dropped off at their motel by a black-and-white car and the officer is apologising at the same time as he's freaking ogling her in a way that makes Sam's fingers clench into fists. Dean touches him on the shoulder. 'Steady,' he murmurs. He knows Sam too well. 'Let her come in. Don't let him see us - we dunno what she told him.'

Where their girl's concerned, Dean's the one with the cool head. And somehow she has become _their girl_ \- she's her own girl, obviously, but she's _Sam's girl_ deep in his possessive gut and that plus a month of rocksalt rounds and hunts and motel rooms together makes her Dean's girl somehow too. Family. Sam pulled Jess out of their burning apartment and Dean pulled them into the Impala, and they've been this intertwined thing ever since, and it's so familiar and comfortable that Sam worries about what it means. Worries that it feels fine to share a bed with your girlfriend and make sleepy, warm eyecontact with your brother in his own bed two feet away every morning. It doesn't just feel fine, either. It feels _right_. He has the two people in the world he cares most about within arm's reach at all times. 

Or at least he _did_ but he took his eye off Jess for what feels like thirty seconds and now he can hear her key to the motel room scrabbling in the lock like her hands are shaking.

'What happened?' Sam can't help demanding as soon as she walks in. She closes the door behind herself and leans on it. The black-and-white drives off. When its piss-weak engine note has died off, Jess visibly relaxes. 

'Got picked up for looking too much like my own picture,' she shrugs. 'Told you we shouldn't have left before they finished the murder investigation.'

'They would have pinned it on one of us, and then we'd've never got free,' Sam argues, but this is a month-old, month-long squabble and there's no heat left in it. 'Whatever. Are you okay?'

'I'm fine. You're not the only person in the room who was gunning for law school, bucko. I can talk to cops. They had no reason to hold me when all three of the IDs I was carrying said I'm Lita Ford, so here I am.' She turns to Dean. 'One of these days we're gonna run into a redneck cop who's actually heard of all your favourite bands, y'know, and we'll be screwed.'

 _We_ , Sam notes.

'Hasn't happened yet,' Dean says lazily. 

'Well, now we know there's an APB out on two tall guys and a blonde girl in an '67 Impala,' Jess says. 'We gotta be more careful. Guess I can't talk you into letting us ditch the car?'

Dean's eyes narrow. 'You guessed right, sweetcheeks.'

Jess's jaw tightens the way it does when she's thinking something over. 'Okay then. I'll come up with something else.'

***

Later on, Dean finds a reason to go out - declares he needs a drink and some less nerdy company - and Sam and Jess have the motel room to themselves. She's still thinking, Sam realises. She's got that studying-for-finals look.

He sits down on the bed next to her and kisses her temple softly, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. He realises with a little shiver of dissonance that it's the same shampoo he and Dean are using - little complimentary motel bottles, not the apple-scented stuff she used to use. 'Hey,' he says. 'For real, are you okay?'

She bites her lip. 'Never been arrested before,' she says with a shaky little laugh. 'Heart was pounding so hard, thought for sure the cops could hear it.' She turns enough to look him in the eye properly and says, 'But ... it was easy. They asked me all these questions and it was so easy to just lie.' It's like she can't quite process it.

Sam knows how that feels. 'Gonna make a great lawyer when this is all over,' he jokes, rubbing a hand soothingly in circles on her back. 

She just looks at him like he's an idiot. 'Even if this ended tomorrow, neither of us is gonna be a lawyer. We've got records now.'

He'd argue - he had (has) a record an inch thick, and he got into Stanford - but she's right. His past is mostly sealed because he was a kid at the time, and almost none of it is under his real name. But he's now a suspect in a murder-arson double feature, as twenty-two year old Stanford pre-law student Sam Winchester, no fixed address. That's not gonna wash off so easy. 

'Sam, it doesn't matter,' she says before he can work out what to say. 'I dunno about you but I wanted to be a lawyer to help people. And since I've been on the road with you and Dean, I've helped more people than most lawyers do in a year. In just a month.' She takes his hand, like this is really important. 'This is okay,' she says. 'Hell, this is good. We just have to be more careful, that's all.'

Sam's glad she's adjusting to this so well. He is. They didn't have a choice, taking her with them - a demon wearing their best friend's body tried to kill her, and if Sam hadn't got back in time it might have succeeded. After that, there was no way he was gonna let her out of his sight, and Dean agreed. It probably counts as kidnap, what they did, and maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome, but she's actually okay with the way they live, the job, all of it. But it scares him to hear her talk like this all the same.

It scares him to hear her talk like Dean.

'One case of mistaken identity isn't a reason to give up on your future,' Sam points out, marshalling himself. 'C'mon. We'll find Dad, figure out what the fuck is going on, and then run you through the hunter's version of witness protection and this'll all be in the past. Just a crazy goddamn road trip you'll be able to tell stories about.'

'And you?' Jess asks. 'You and Dean?'

Sam hesitates.

'You gonna get your slates wiped clean with me? Or are you gonna be part of these stories I'm gonna be telling?'

There's the truth, and there's the answer Sam would like to be able to give, and they're not the same answer and he doesn't know which one she wants to hear anyway. 

***

Dean slides back into the motel hours later. Sam's half asleep, sacked out on the bed he's been sharing with Jess. She's still up at the tiny dining table, working on the laptop. It's dark. Sam's been sort of watching her face in the blue-white glow of the screen and zoning out. 

'Hey,' Dean says quietly. He sits down at the table with her. 'You okay? Boy Wonder debrief you?'

'I told you, I'm fine,' Jess says. 'You didn't have to leave, y'know.'

'Figured you two might like some space,' Dean shrugs. He pauses, and adds, 'y'know, some space that's bigger than a shower cubicle.'

Jess rolls her eyes. Sam feels something warm and secret-shivery in his gut, watching them and knowing they probably don't know he's still awake. 'For a second there I thought you were being sweet. Should have known better, you perv.'

'Hey,' Dean says. He's still murmuring low and warm, and Sam can't see his face but he knows the face he'll be pulling. 'Thin walls, lady. Plus, that's my baby brother you're ravishing. I gotta look out for him, make sure I don't need to bust in and rescue him.'

'You're a pig,' Jess informs Dean, but she looks sort of charmed. It's the Dean Winchester magic at work. Sam used to be amazed by it. Now he's just used to it.

'For real though, you're okay?' Dean asks, changing gear. 'I don't need to ride on down to the station with the scariest piece of ID I can fake and bust some heads for bad behaviour?'

Jess shakes her head. 'It wasn't tea and biscuits but it wasn't police brutality. I'm fine, I swear.'

Dean leans forward a little. 'And are you gonna tell me whatever it is you're planning? Don't give me the innocent look,' he adds. 'Might be able to lie your way out of an interrogation room - good work on that, rookie, by the way - but you can't fool me. You better not be planning on doing something to my baby,' he adds. 

'No,' Jess says, and shrugs. 'And it's nothing major, I just figure, they're looking for two guys above average height and a blonde girl, in a distinctive car. Nothing we can do about the fact that you're both tall -'

'I've been saying we should find a way to shrink Sammy for years,' Dean breaks in. 

'- and you won't ditch your car, but the blonde girl bit, that I can change.'

Dean's clearly not sure what she means, but he says, 'Okay, tell me how I can help with that.'

Jess pushes the laptop shut and leans across the table to kiss Dean on the cheek. 'When I figure out the details, I will. But right now, I'm going to bed. Possibly to ravish your baby brother.'

She pads across the room to get her PJs out of her bag, and slips into the bathroom. Dean watches her go. Sam's pretty sure he says something like, 'Okay. Tell me how I can help with that,' under his breath. 

Sam wondered if they were gonna go down that road again. 

When Jess climbs into bed with him and cuddles up, Dean waits another couple of minutes and then strips to boxers and undershirt and flops down on his own mattress. Sam blinks sleepily at him. Jess wriggles back against Sam's body. Dean smiles.

***

Sam wakes up the next morning to a dull buzzing noise, and low voices in the bathroom. He pulls himself up out of bed and finds Dean and Jess in the bathroom. He's holding her hair up in a loose, fist-bound ponytail and saying, 'Are you sure about this?'

'Morning,' says Sam, and they both look up at him in the mirror. 

'Will you please tell your brother that he doesn't need to ask me fifteen times if I'm 'sure' about stuff?' Jess asks. There's a fond smile twitching her mouth even though she's trying to scowl. 

There's a pair of scissors in the basin, and the buzzing noise is a set of clippers. 

'You really don't,' Sam tells Dean. 'So this is what you meant by doing something about getting recognised?'

Jess shrugs. 'Makes sense, doesn't it? I figure if I borrow your clothes for a while, they'll be baggy enough to change my shape, then short hair, ditch my makeup … might buy us a little more space in small towns with bored cops, y'know?' 

'Ought to help, yeah,' Sam agrees helplessly. He doesn't want to see her do this. He doesn't want her to _have_ to. But she's right. Getting arrested has thrown her, it's obvious, it's not surprising, it's sensible, even - being blase about the law doesn't ever help - but it's there, it's fear. She's afraid and so she's doing this thing to defend herself, and Sam hates that that's what's behind it but it doesn't stop it being a sensible move. 

'Alright then,' says Dean after a moment, meeting Sam's eyes in the mirror again and squaring up to the job. 'Hand me those scissors, darlin'.'

Dean pulls Jess's ponytail up again and shears it off as close to her head as he can. She closes her eyes at the kiss of the cold metal against her skin - Sam watches her in the mirror - her knuckles are white where she's gripping the basin. Dean puts the golden hair he's cut off on the vanity, the scissors click down next to them, and then he and Jess are looking at each other in the mirror, a look that says more than a thousand words and Sam can read it, but it's not for him. It's between them, it's understanding and solidarity, soldier to soldier.

Why does Sam always love people who think the way to be strong is to tough it out when they're hurting? 

Sam picks up the clippers, because if he can't talk them down off their ledges he might as well join them, and steps up. 

'How short d'you want it?' he asks Jess, and his voice has a crack in it, hairline like the ones in his heart. Dean hasn't stepped aside, he's sliding his hand soothingly up and down Jess's forearm. She's leaning against the basin and the backs of her thighs are touching Sam's knees. Dean's basically bracing them both. 

'Not too short,' she says. 'I mean, I want some hair left. God, I don't know,' she laughs, bravado and nerves. 'Just give me a dude's haircut.'

Sam looks at the straight-edge of the remains of her ponytail, and at the clippers, and turns them off. 'Alright. Give me the scissors back,' he says. He's given a few haircuts in his time, mostly to Dean, like Dean used to do his. Neatening up the back of Jess's scalp so it looks less like a lawnmower took to it, and clipping the bits that used to be her bangs, it's easy enough. It's not gonna look professional, but it'll do. 

Dean stays close. Jess keeps her eyes closed and her head straight up, back stiff like she's made of rebar. There's nothing to interrupt the snicking sound of the scissors but the way they're breathing, which sounds too loud to Sam's ears. And when he's done, Jess looks up and in the mirror, and smiles, this beautiful shaky brave thing, and turns in Sam's hold to kiss him, and Dean's right there. Jess kisses him too, when Sam's a little breathless, pulls Dean in closer with trembling hands. Sam can feel the tremors through her body, feel Dean's hard breathing too. 

'Thank you,' Jess says softly.

***

Jess slouches in Sam's hoodies through dirty streets, and no-one looks twice. They think she's a dude, and she revels in it. Sam keeps her hair trimmed every time she worries it's getting shaggy, but she won't let him cut his because she likes carding her short blunt fingernails through it, likes watching the way Dean pulls on it when he gets carried away. 

She drops all her makeup in motel trashcans, little thuds that sound like heartbeats. She gets the motel rooms and she asks for rooms with king beds, throws keys to Sam and Dean when they're unloading the Impala and her hot stare dares them to complain about how she's decided they're doing this. 

They don't. They do this. She might like her cover, flashing the ID that says her name's Rob Halford, but when she closes the door behind them she's still their girl, or maybe they're her boys. She's warm in the night between them, she's Dean's drive and Sam's smarts combined, she's too good for them, and she still stays. 

The next time she gets arrested, she breaks herself out. 

The next APB is for three guys - one sasquatch, one leather jacket, one skinny blond with a smart mouth. 

They change the Impala's plates.


End file.
